Both James Madison and the Anti-Federalists Were Right About Standing Armies

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. ~ James Madison

Americans tend to be bi-polar about the U.S. Constitution, and they remain in denial about its failure to achieve the ends proclaimed for it by the founding generation.

One the one hand, Americans tend to idolatrize the Constitution as sacred and infallible rather than recognizing it for the stumbling, trial-and-error experiment in self-government that it is, created by flawed human beings who acknowledged their frailties and never expected their experiment in constitutionalism to succeed. They were right; it has failed. The longer Americans remain in denial about this demonstrable fact and refuse to think seriously about what to do about it, the more likely this constitutional failure will result in tyranny.

On the other hand, Americans tend to accept the Constitution as a "living document," putty in the hands of law professors and judges whom they have ordained and sanctified as the high priesthood of constitutionalism, quite the opposite of the judicial role envisioned by the founding generation. This manic side of the American brain treats the Constitution's failures as an excuse to constantly tinker and remold the Constitution, seemingly unaware that their ad hoc, unprincipled tinkering only makes matters worse.

Consequently, rather than accepting and learning from the Constitution’s failures—and either amending it or replacing it altogether—people who hold the Constitution sacred, in a reversal of cause and effect, have pointed to its failures and the assault on it by the living-document school as a reason to reinforce the Constitution's status as a kind of secular bible. They have, in effect, become depressed and used the repeated abuse and disrespect of the Constitution by elected officials, judges and bureaucrats as an excuse to justify their denial that its shortcomings and failures are inherent in the Constitution itself, sown into the very fabric of the constitutional design. Instead of confronting the Constitution’s failures for what they are, the constitutional idolaters contend that the failures derive from misrepresentation, misinterpretation and intentional desecration by the constitutional heathens.

This, in my opinion, accounts for the almost theological attachment to the Constitution many Americans exhibit, and it explains the constant refrain one hears, especially from the right, that American democracy would work just fine if only we would restore the original Constitution. To the contrary, it is the very defects of the original Constitution that led to the ill-fated, ad hoc adjustments (and their depredations) by the living-document crowd. And worse, it was these very constitutional deficiencies that permitted the self-interested usurpations by politicians and judges that plague us today. Failing to acknowledge these facts and insisting instead that restoring the original constitutional design will set everything right in the natural order only reinforces and amplifies the document’s original flaws.

There is no better example of these intrinsic constitutional flaws than the Constitution’s provision for standing armies. While the opponents of the Constitution, who came to be labeled “Anti-Federalists,” opposed standing armies vociferously, they weren't the only ones. The Father of the Constitution himself, James Madison, and many of his fellow Federalist supporters of the Constitution also feared and loathed standing armies.

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. ~ James Madison, Speech before Constitutional Convention (6/29/1787).

Yet the Founding Fathers deluded themselves that the constitutional architecture they had devised, which ceded enormous power to the national government to raise and provide for standing armies, would overcome and guard against the harm and ravages they all knew and feared standing armies would produce.

In my “Individual Declaration of Independence” posted on the Fourth of July last, I proposed a new constitutional paradigm in which there would be no standing armies. I was most grateful by the many positive and encouraging responses I received to that essay. I was, however, quite astonished at the number of people who identified themselves as "libertarians" who nevertheless took issue with my opposition to standing armies. The most common comment received was, to the effect, "How would we ever defend ourselves against foreign attack?"

In light of this surprising response, I would like to share with readers this outstanding essay by Laurence Vance on the question of standing armies and this history of the controversy over standing armies at the time of the founding.

I am the chairman of Revolution PAC as well as the president and co-founder of the Social Security Institute (along with Mike Korbey). I also serve on the Advisory Board of Gold Standard 2012. Previously, I was chief economist to Jack Kemp at Empower America, former staff d...